Aaaaand for the first time in months, we have a top-of-the-mountain shakeup in our NBA MVP ladder.

Brace yourselves accordingly—both physically and emotionally.

Now feels like a good time for the usual reminder: These rankings reflect a snapshot in time—what my ballot would look like if the season ended before Monday night's games. Recent performances carry a ton of weight within discussions for each player, but this is still a season-long evaluation at its heart and will not be entirely subjected to spur-of-the-moment swings that are implicitly unsustainable.

This ladder can and most likely will change before the regular season ends on Apr. 9. And hey! That's perfectly fine. There are no brownie points for stubbornness—for sticking to the same order in hopes of getting it right in the end.

Adjustments and reactions to the tenor of what we're watching and the context behind it is the entire point of this exercise. No, MVP ladders don't need to be fluid. But the mark of a good race is in its debatability at the top.

And unless something changes dramatically over the next couple of weeks, this MVP race should be in for an all-time finish.

Honorable Mentions

10. Damian Lillard, Portland Trail Blazers

9. Devin Booker, Phoenix Suns

8. Domantas Sabonis, Sacramento Kings

7. James Harden, Philadelphia 76ers

6. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Oklahoma City Thunder

The back end of the MVP ballot is unendingly fascinating.

Nobody seems like they'll have the juice to party crash the top five. SGA comes closest. His numbers since the last ladder are bonkers: 35.0 points and 3.8 assists on 54 percent shooting inside the arc. His passing has slipped a bit, and it'd be nice if he took more threes. But he's among the smartest shooting-foul solicitors in the game and not receiving enough credit for his defensive effort this year. It doesn't seem like his abdominal-strain maintenance will cost him any MVP or All-NBA votes.

Harden has been brilliant—somewhat quietly, I might add. So brilliant, in fact, he might cost Joel Embiid MVP votes among those who like to reward players with crummier supporting casts.

Sabonis is the engine that makes the still-better-than-you-think Kings go. De'Aaron Fox has claims to the title on certain nights, but Sabonis' impact is more comprehensive and extends away from the ball.

Booker's total playing time may keep him off the ballot altogether. I'm not sure it should. His offense is out of this world. He's averaging 34.1 points and 4.7 assists since the last ladder while shooting 61.5 percent on twos and 45.3 percent from long range. Kevin Durant hasn't played nearly enough to detract from Booker's end-of-ballot case, and the latter has a chance to eclipse 1,800 total minutes for the year—enough for top-10-MVP consideration, as well as enough to complicate an already-complex All-NBA field.

Lillard's efficiency has dropped over the past couple of weeks, and he's starting to sound like someone preparing to miss time. But his entire-season numbers are absurd, and the Portland Trail Blazers' failure to make more out of his best year yet remains malpractice.

5. Jayson Tatum, Boston Celtics

Last Ranking: 5

Luka Dončić's thigh injury set the stage for Jayson Tatum to climb the MVP ranks. He failed to capitalize on the opportunity.

Tatum is averaging 28.9 points, 10.2 rebounds and 5.0 assists since the last ladder while getting to the foul line a ton. He's also burying just 30.8 percent of his treys, a downtick that has coincided with more macro offensive struggles for the Boston Celtics. The team ranks 22nd in points scored per possession since the All-Star break.

Boston's offensive tumble is not on Tatum alone. But he has battled perimeter warts for much of the year. He is converting just 29.1 percent of his off-the-dribble threes, a mark that pales in comparison to last year's 33.4 percent clip.

Granted, Tatum's effective field-goal percentage on all jumpers (47.5) is right in line with last season's returns (47.5). But his slump from the outside is both pronounced and, officially, on the lengthier end. Since Jan. 1, he's shooting 33.5 percent from distance, including 28.7 percent on off-the-bounce triples, with an effective field-goal percentage of 45.3 on all jumpers.

In many ways, the enduring legitimacy of Tatum's MVP case despite jump-shooting wonkiness is a testament to how far he's come as a complete package. His rim frequency is slipping but still up from last season, and he has never averaged more free-throw attempts per 36 minutes.

Rejoining the top three of this race is nevertheless a gargantuan ask when looking at who populates it. But moving up another rung is hardly out of the question. If nothing else, Tatum has almost a 500-minute lead on No. 4, a gap that's currently scheduled to grow and one that's large enough to give him an availability bump.

4. Luka Dončić, Dallas Mavericks

Last Ranking: 4

Luka Dončić has not played since Mar. 8 while dealing with a left thigh injury. And while that absence hasn't been lengthy enough to cost him a top-four position, it certainly prohibits him from advancing up the MVP pyramid.

Whether Dončić can fend off Jayson Tatum, let alone leapfrog any of the names to come, is a matter of course. He didn't suit up for the Dallas Mavericks on Monday night against the Memphis Grizzlies and doesn't have a concrete timetable for return.

Climbing back into the top three is starting to feel (slightly) outside the realm of possibility. Nobody in front of him is falling off, and Dončić has once again regressed to a not-immortal jump shooter. He is hitting fewer than 35 percent of his threes since the last MVP ladder and sits below 34 percent over the past two MVP check-ins.

Dallas is also barely winning the minutes he plays. It is a plus-5 with him since the previous MVP ladder and a minus-17 overall since Kyrie Irving made his debut.

So much goes into these numbers. I discussed some of it last time. None of it detracts from Dončić's overall value. His body of work amid ridiculous usage deserves to be celebrated.

Still, between time missed and the feeling-out awkwardness he and Irving have shared to date, Dončić's MVP credentials aren't nearly as strong as they were two-plus months ago. That's not an insult; just a fact.

3. Giannis Antetokounmpo, Milwaukee Bucks

Last Ranking: 3

Giannis Antetokounmpo's MVP candidacy feels like it's flying under the radar. That numbness to his dominance exists through no fault of his own. He keeps chugging along, routinely posting numbers that boggle the mind.

If anything, Antetokounmpo's MVP case has only strengthened in recent weeks. He is averaging 31.1 points and 6.8 assists since the last ladder while downing 60.7 percent of his twos and 46.7 percent of his triples. The Milwaukee Bucks, meanwhile, have seized control of the Eastern Conference's No. 1 seed—and grabbed the NBA's best overall record.

Keeping Antetokounmpo in the third spot requires restraint and splitting hairs. He remains the consensus best player alive, the star you'd most want to build your team around when trying to win a title and make the most of your regular season.

To that end, the question for him isn't "Why should he win MVP?" It's more like "Why shouldn't he win?"

Enter the split hairs.

Antetokounmpo is reaching a crescendo on offense. More of his wide-open threes are falling, he's nailing more than 67 percent of his free throws (an improvement), and he's hit 43.4 percent of his twos outside the restricted area since the last MVP ladder, compared to 28.7 percent beforehand. But his defense has slipped a tad, and he's logged fewer minutes this season than anyone else in the top five.

Teeny quibbles like this aren't an indictment or cause for long-term concern. In a race this close, though, they do represent a meaningful difference.

2. Nikola Jokić, Denver Nuggets

Last Ranking: 1

There will be arguments against this demotion. And make no mistake, the decision is not beyond debate.

Reasonable minds can and will (and should!) disagree. Furrowed brows, bitten lips and skeptical duck faces are all acceptable responses to moving Nikola Jokić down a peg. Truly intense loathing is only a fitting reaction if you think that this placement is drowning in the undertow of recency bias—or, more notably, that Jokić already bagged the award.

I will not listen to complaints from the latter category.

Wrapping up this MVP race at any point before the end of the regular season inexcusably dismisses the cases of everyone inside the top three. The margins separating Jokić, Giannis Antetokounmpo and You-Know-Who-But-Let-Us-Not-Reveal-Him-Yet are that thin when you dig into the details. Jokić is running away with nothing—not even the Total Minutes crown. (He has as sub-200-minute lead.)

Whether this is an overreaction to the Denver Nuggets' recent slide is more debatable. They are 5-5 since the All-Star break and just 2-5 over their past seven games.

And yet, this isn't about that. Jokić is averaging 27.7 points, 12.6 rebounds and 9.1 assists while downing over 70 percent of his twos during Denver's seven-game tumult—through which the team continues to win his minutes and is also better defensively with him on the floor.

This decision ultimately has more to do with He-Who-Will-Be-Named-Shortly than anything else. But it's also a slight-yet-aggressive nod to the variability with which Jokić plays. He can over-defer, which is different from box-score-voyeuring the shot-attempts column. Most critically, there is a visible difference to how he approaches defense over the court of a 48-minute game.

Denver is 29th in opponent field-goal percentage allowed at the rim. Jokić is part of the problem. For all the plays he can break up in space, he gets caught in No Man's Land much too often and doesn't have the panoramic speed to recover around the basket. "Knowing where to be" means only so much when you're late to the party.

Jokić's anticipation and aggression seem to heighten in crunch time. That's great. But the Nuggets might not be playing from behind as often since the All-Star break if they were, collectively, better at executing wire-to-wire. And Jokić's performance cannot be excused due to those around him. Denver's supporting cast may over-accentuate his flaws. They also help inflate his net-rating swing. It works both ways.

Catch-all-metric radicalists will insist that this ventures too far into the eye test, that I have been hypnotized by Daryl Morey social media propaganda, or that I am over-compensating for the recent shift in #TheDiscourse. Perhaps I am. But fallible logic doesn't automatically lend itself to overarching incorrectness. The larger issue is the belief, however prevalent, that there's only one right choice in an MVP landscape flush with worthwhile winners.

1. Joel Embiid, Philadelphia 76ers

Last Ranking: 2

Joel Embiid is doing the damn thing.

That's been true all season. It's especially true now.

Embiid is averaging 36.1 points, 4.6 assists and 2.3 blocks while canning 65.4 percent of his twos and 45.8 percent of his triples since the last MVP ladder, during which time he's led the Philadelphia 76ers to an 8-1 record despite navigating one of league's most hellacious schedules.

Force-of-nature declarations verge on cliche, but this is very much a his-will-be-done experience. Embiid's outside-in operations have always flirted with unstoppability. They are married to inevitability now. Even the defenses most suited to derailing him (Boston, Miami, Milwaukee) fail to poke holes in his armor now.

Like I mentioned before, Embiid's case is far from impugnable. He remains perhaps the NBA's most dominant defender, but there is, at times, a hair less deterrence to the way he protects the basket. Philly is allowing more points per 100 possessions with him on the court since the All-Star break.

None of this is a defining demerit. Embiid can flip the Defensive-Player-of-the-Millenia switch when it matters most, his contests inside the free-throw line have included more erasure moments during this latest stretch, and opponents still reach the rim far less often with him on the floor for the season. There is also a subset of people who will celebrate Jokić as a Jedi Master for picking his spots or conserving his energy. The same benefit of the doubt should be granted to Embiid.

This still feels like a race that will be determined in the coming weeks. It might even reach a gripping conclusion over the course of a game or two. Embiid is scheduled to face off against Jokić on Mar. 27 and Giannis Antetokounmpo on Apr. 2. The lines separating all three stars are thin enough for singular head-to-heads and moments to turn the final tally on its head.

For now, the strength of Embiid's case lies in its relative absence of blemishes. He may have the best second-best teammate of anyone on this list but not to the extent that Philly's pecking order is the least bit blurred. Any issue with him landing here—and potentially winning MVP—is less about there being better candidates and more about matters of preference.

Unless otherwise noted, stats courtesy of NBA.com, Basketball Reference, Stathead or Cleaning the Glass and accurate entering Monday's games. Salary information via Spotrac.

Dan Favale covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter (@danfavale), and subscribe to the Hardwood Knocks podcast, co-hosted by Bleacher Report's Grant Hughes.